James Kirkup is The Telegraph's Executive Editor (Politics). He was previously the Telegraph's Political Editor and has worked at Westminster since 2001.

The recession will make bond geeks of us all

Frank Field enters the wonderful world of bond market geekery this morning with a suitably gloomy assessment of Labour's borrowing plans.

Speaking as an amateur bond-geek in the political village, I extend a warm welcome to any new members. (As I've pointed out before, aspiring members can do worse than keeping an eye on Burning our Money. And check out this excellent piece by a professional geek.)

Now Frank Field can hardly be called a financial novice, but it's still striking to see any MP, even him, writing about gilts, and on the op-ed page of a national newspaper too.

When I first arrived at Westminster as a reporter for Bloomberg seven years ago, such a thing would have been unthinkable: I painfully remember scouring the corridors for MPs and others who were both willing and able to talk about things that would interest my readers in the money markets, with little success. Times were good and no one was much interested in the economy when it appeared to be doing well.

Of course, there were honourable exceptions, the Cables and Redwoods of this world, but they were prophets without honour in their own land, largely regarded as eccentrics and obsessives for talking about debt, borrowing and the like. On the whole, MPs of all sorts chose not to pay much attention to the nitty-gritty of finance and economics (or even to learn the difference between the two), tacitly accepting that Gordon Brown really had changed the rules of the game so they didn't need worry about the details. If that wilful ignorance didn't cause our current troubles, it undoubtedly contributed to their severity.

How things change. These days LIBOR is practically discussed in pubs, and it's not unusual to see credit default swaps reported outside the business sections of newspapers. Truly, we are all geeks now.

It's only natural that today's problems persuade more of our elected representatives to pay more attention to bonds, currencies and the other sinews of the international financial system. Better late than never. And hopefully they'll stay interested when the good days return.